Getting Forest Help & Standoff Outcome

Getting Forest Help & Standoff Outcome

Getting Forest Help & Standoff Outcome. I'm Greg Martin with today's Northwest Report.

The shooting of Robert "LaVoy" Finicum during the closing days of the recent standoff in Oregon has been under investigation. A prosecutor ruled the fatal shooting was legally justified, saying state law allows use of deadly force when officers believe a person is about to seriously injure or kill someone. The FBI is investigating the shooting with details being released that Finicum was hit only three times with one of those rounds piercing his heart. Some reports of as many as 100 shots being fired are untrue with actually only a total of eight shots fired.

Private woodland owners in Baker and Union counties in Oregon can reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire and improve forest health with financial support from USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service. Mike Burton with USDA-NRCS in La Grande explains.

BURTON: We have offered kind of an all hands, all lands approach which means we're not going to not necessarily look at political boundaries when we talk about doing things to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire. We have initiated a program to contract with private landowners, at their request, to do thinning and slash disposal for both catastrophic wildfire and forest health benefits.

He recommends you contact your local NRCS office to begin the application process.

That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.

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